I had students do that: I told them to "write on the right side" of the blue exam book, meaning for them to only write on the facing page and not the back of it. I had two students literally write on the right side only, cramming their essays into about two inches of space per line.

Okay, the patheticness (I'm making it a new word, gosh durnit!) of the first cake's "decorations" somewhat led me to expect the kind of linguistic mistreatment displayed thereupon. I'm rather inclined to forgive and forget that one.

However.

When one looks at the meticulous care with which the decorator of that second cake wrote every last word, letter, and mark of punctuation -- to which I shall return momentarily -- it boggles the mind that such a simple thing as *meaning* would have gone so painfully and abysmally overlooked and unnoticed.

And then there's that apostrophe. Oh, that apostrophe. The pain! The anguish! The horror! Whereas quotation marks are the bane of the collective existence of worth-their-salt cake decorators the world over, That Darned Apostrophe is the same for those who aspire to teach English to teenagers. If there's one thing I'd rid the world of, it'd be the Inappropriate Apostrophe Used In Plurals. That someone glorified such an apostrophe in pristine glow-in-the-dark orange icing for everyone to see (and laugh at) just kills me.

Moving on to the third cake, I do have to wonder what made the decorator choose red, as opposed to something not quite as completely opposite the requested color. Spite? Or does Obliviousness really trump that completely? :-)

Nothing prevents me from eating cake, but I have a feeling these would make me laugh so hard that I wouldn't be able to chew and swallow.... either that or I'd still be laughing while eating the cake. Then, I'd probably drool icing. And that blue icing gets pretty ugly... :)

Got an even better one, because it was permanent. This story comes from a pastor at my former church, and it's true.

When this pastor's uncle died, When the family picked out his headstone, they told the company to write "Daddy" and "Pawpaw" in the corners. A few months later, when the headstone was placed, they discovered that the company had carved "Daddy and Pawpaw in the corners" across the top of the headstone!

Years ago - and I mean YEARS ago (1973) I worked in DP (data processing - now known as Information Systems) with a guy who was, well, shall we say "literal". Part of the job was to transmit information on tape to our Mother Ship in Iowa. One had to type "SEND TAPE". (Can you see where this is going?) When I explained - verbally - this to Al, he typed "SEND SPACE TAPE" Ya gotta love it.

I can't actually imagine the *fury* I would feel if I turned up at a bakery to collect my cake and found that it had been decorated like that! It's like somebody's pet dog has developed the manual dexterity to handle the icing bag and has been let loose with the order instructions.

A former coworker once ordered a cake over the phone and asked them to write, "Happy Birthday to the Queen of Toxicology." She was concerned that the word "toxicology" might be unfamiliar to the bakery, so she carefully spelled it out - t-o-x-i-c-o-l-o-g-y.

When the cake arrived, it said, "Happy Birthday to the Qween of Toxicology."

These are so wonderful, and really brighten my day. But I'm wondering if the cake-writers in the back of the supermarket bakery just don't speak any English. That might explain most of this, if they're simply receiving forms and transcribing whatever's on them. I guess that makes this slightly less funny and more understandable. However, that doesn't explain Calvin (Green). I think I can say with authority that there is almost never an occasion to use parentheses on a birthday cake.

I know a lot of people are quick to defend the cake decorators who may not have a solid grasp on the English language, and while it's true that they may have a good reason for being ignorant, their bosses need to step up. I mean, if one of your decorators isn't so good with English - even if he or she is a whiz with a pastry bag - take over the writing on cakes duty for them!

This reminds me of a story my brother-in-law told me. His neighbor built a deck and they had a party to celebrate. The cake decorator at the store where the cake was ordered apparently had a shaky grasp of English and wrote on it, "Congratulations on your new dick."

My eldest son is named Dillon but when he was young we called him Dillie (Dillie is my grandfathers name so it's a family thing) for his 4th birthday the cake maker wrote Happy Birthday Dillie in pink, so the next year I ordered the cake and told them the story about pink letters, so she wrote happy birth dillie (it's a boy). Well that is what they wrote on the Cake for his 5th birthday. Poor kid

I'm a former bakery worker and I made sure I did all my cakes right but we once hired this girl and she totally just messed this one cake up by making it in bright pink and bright pink letters and to top it off wrote "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH, MAKE SURE TO SPELL NAME RIGHT AND PUT HAVE A FUN NIGHT!" needless to say she got fired for awhile lol.

I teach pre-k and when the school was celebrating Dr. Suess and Read Across America the cakes for the celebration read:

Read ACrossAmerica!

The delivery people left them in the front lobby just as the children and parents were arriving and everyone that had read them screamed MOVE THOSE TO THE CAFETERIA!!! There were 4 of them, full sheets!

And I thought I had a colorful cake-ordering history...now it seems totally boring.

When I was in an acting company in 7th grade called the Performance Project, I hosted a cast party at the end of the year. I ordered a cake to say "Congratulations Performance Project". Kind of like the "qween of toxicology" story, I took great care to ensure the proper spelling of both "Congratulations" and "Performance". Imagine my surprise when I opened the box in front of all my fellow cast members and found the message "Congratulations Performance Projet". For the rest of the party, everybody insisted on pronouncing it in an obnoxious French accent like the one used to say "Target".

Finally, this may be somewhat off-topic, but I feel that a story with a happy ending may be necessary to restore your faith in the baking industry. I directed a middle school production of The Taming of the Shrew, and we set it in New York in the 50's (hey, it worked!). We called our group The Lord Chamberlain's Men (since that was the name of Shakespeare's first company). For the cast party, our local bakery successfully executed a beautiful 50's themed cake featuring a vinyl record with "THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S MEN" written on the label, and spelled impeccably. Keep the faith!

You know, I'm a baker and a Culinary Institute Grad, and these cake decorators really offend me! I mean, it makes me laugh, but it's embarrassing! I hate to do cake decorating, but it isn't THAT hard to write something!

Okay, you're allowed the occasional slip now and then when you're just cranking out cake, but slips like this is just shoddy. This makes me so embarrassed to be a baker, even though they are cracking me up.

"Wrecks" is exactly the right name for the site. It's like the classic wisdom about car wrecks: you don't want to look, but can't tear your attention away from the carnage. I don't want to believe that someone iced that bit about abbreviating into a cake. And the apostrophe in "Birthday's" just, um, takes the cake.

I'm grateful to you and this site not only for the serious stomach muscle workout but for the cautionary tale on never assuming that the baker understands the cake order.

Talk about taking instructions TOO literally! I remember back in primary school, there were a few kids in my class who, when given the instructions "make sure you write your name at the top right corner", had instead written "your name" at the top right corner...

You know sometimes this sort of thing is a result of how nasty the *customers* are.

The bakery in my neighborhood appreciates the "Ed Debevic's" style of customer service. And they get enough work that they feel comfortable enough to screw up your order if you treat them wrong. (Like talk to them like they're dumb.)

It's a very entertaining place to people watch. My friends and I love their stuff and we've learned to order with a smile!

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What's a Wreck?

What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

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